Ask a Decorator: Matching Floors

The majority of my floor is neutral tile except the office at front of our house and the master at the far back of the house. This year I replaced the builder-grade carpet in the office with wide wood plank luxury vinyl that closely resembles barn wood.

Now it is time to do the same in master. Since the master and office are far away, can I get away with doing a different flooring? Or do I need to be consistent and use the same wide plank wood vinyl tile? The reason I ask is because that was very expensive and I have found flooring I like that is similar for much less.

My first rule in decorating is to not be bound by rules! If you are decorating your home so that you can enjoy it, then decorate in ways that make you feel good about your home. However, if you are decorating your home with plans to sell in the fairly near future, then you’ll want to consider decorating in ways that will be appealing to most buyers.

It is perfectly acceptable to have different hardwoods in a house, just as it is acceptable to have different rooms painted different colors. Since your office and master bedroom are far away from each other, you can most certainly use different hardwoods. The key to making this work for resale purposes, however, is to have something that ties the rooms together so that the house doesn’t look “choppy.” We worked on a house recently that had light maple in the entryway and kitchen. The homeowner wanted to put wood in the living room/dining room, which adjoin both the entry and the kitchen, but she wanted a dark hardwood. So, to tie the new wood in with the existing wood, we used a dark oak with a light maple border. It was a great way to tie the rooms together while giving the homeowner the dark wood she wanted in the living room/dining room.

Since your rooms aren’t adjoining, it’s less important to have them tie together, but if you are decorating for resale, I would suggest keeping a consistent decorating style throughout the home.